Tag: Asheville

Dogs, Apartments and Designs

Dogs, Apartments and Designs

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We have many things that need to happen before we can put our home on the market. The first is to move out of the house. Having pets makes home selling difficult, although not impossible. We have previously sold three other homes while living with one or two golden retrievers but those homes were smaller and easier to manage. This home is quite large and our three goldens can make a day’s house cleaning look like a wasted effort in no time. Just keeping up with the puppy nose prints on the windows is a full-time job. We have the option of moving into the apartment over our garage so this is next on the checklist.

When we designed our home back in 2002-2003, my mother in law had just moved in with us. We decided to build the garage first, with an apartment over it, and then live there while we built the house. It was a great plan except that the apartment only has one bedroom. To give everyone a bit of space, we planned for a half bath in the garage and partitioned off part of the garage as a bedroom. Don and I slept in this space while my mother in law got the apartment. We ended up living with this arrangement for two years. Two long years. My mother in law lived with us for several years then moved back to Louisiana. We had a couple of renters after that. Each were real estate clients that needed a place to crash for a short term. Then our nephew moved in for a while. Six years ago, my own mother moved in with us. Recently she decided to move back to Northern Illinois to be closer to friends and family and that’s how I spent this weekend; helping my mom with her final packing. We spent a great deal of time organizing what the movers will take north, what goes in storage and what goes to Goodwill.  The apartment is now empty (or will be after today). It’s almost time for us to move in.

Next on the checklist is scrubbing down the apartment, fresh paint, and new flooring. We have to remember that this space is also for sale and it, too needs to look good. Once this is complete we will move just enough furniture for our needs, including the dog beds. All two dozen of them. Doesn’t every dog have a bed in every room of the house including their very own couch in the bedroom? Of our three golden retrievers, only Tripp will think that moving is an adventure. Old lady Truly simply won’t care as long as she is sleeping in the same room with us. The Punkin, however, is not going to like this. The Punkin doesn’t like change. She thinks everything is a conspiracy to her happiness and well being. The Punkin will not be pleased but the Punkin needs to learn to cope. We expect many arguments with the dogs as they realize they are no longer allowed in the house. All three of them have lived their entire lives on this property. Not having access to their refuge is going to take some convincing. If they only knew what comes next…..

All seven of our dogs have lived all or some part of their life on this property. Taylor was our first golden and we got her as a little pup when we lived in town on Murdock Avenue. From that remodel project we moved into a rental house while we built in East Asheville then moved again when that house was complete. We eventually sold that house and then house-sat for friends for a few months before moving into another rental while building the Spec house at the front of our property. We moved into that once it was complete. Poor Taylor moved with us four times plus two house-sitting stints. By the time we got to the Spec house, she knew all of the signs and when she saw the dog bed hit the floor in the new house, she was not please. She went to a corner, turned her back and sulked. We tried petting her but she went rigid. Her body was vibrating with the effort not to respond. So we did the only thing we knew to do; we made popcorn. Popcorn makes everything better in the eyes of a Golden Retriever. It was while living in the spec house that Taylor was diagnosed with a mast cell tumor. She was our beautiful flower child, always chasing butterflies and looking for fun. She made it through one more move when we moved into the garage. She saw the foundation go in for the house but missed the rest. She is the only one of our seven dogs who has not lived in this home but at least she had the opportunity to enjoy the pasture and the 100 Acre Woods.

This home was built and designed for our dogs as well as for us. There are no stairs for arthritic hips to maneuver when going outdoors. The windows are at dog level so they can look out at the pasture and watch their domain. We tiled the back foyer and designed a pocket gate for easy confinement when entering the home with muddy feet. The basement has a training ring so I can work with my dogs towards obedience competition titles and a large dog bath to make grooming easier. We also have a dog run off the back of the house so the dogs have a place to potty on days when we are gone too long. I am hoping the person who buys this house loves dogs as much as we do. We built it for them as much as for us.

 

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Tripp and the Punkin watch over their domain from the dog bed

 

The House on the Hill

The House on the Hill

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Don and I are constantly asked why we are selling our home. Today is a prime example of one of the many reasons. He is busy mowing and scraping the road while I am busy mowing and spreading mulch. Both of us would rather be in our studio creating art but even without the amount of rain that we have had lately, our remaining 8-1/2 acres is a full-time job this time of year. Our property would be perfect for a horse person as we have ample space to cross pasture without overgrazing. The knoll where the tobacco barn used to sit would make a beautiful spot for a stable.  A gentleman farmer would enjoy having orchards and maybe a cow or two. Don and I faced the hard truth several years ago, we are not farmers. We are artists and what we want out of life is not what we wanted when we purchased this property 18 years ago. Our needs have changed.

Like any home seller, putting our home on the market is not an easy step. We can’t just say “ok, do it now.”  There is a lot of prep work involved.  The basement needs more insulation installed in the ceiling. I had started drylocking the dogs grooming room, mostly to brighten it up but the job is only half done. The basement itself is a mess. My training area is in order but we tend to pile stuff wherever we drop it. On the first floor the fireplace is still lacking a cherry surround and mantel. My closet was finally finished with shelves installed after 13 years of living out of milk crates. Many rooms are missing trim in areas. The kitchen needs some additional cabinetry and most buyers are going to expect quartz or granite countertops and not the Formica that we have been perfectly happy with. The second floor has rooms that need painting and more trim installed. The outside has all kinds of little maintenance projects.  Could I put the house on the market without doing these many items? Sure, but I wouldn’t get top dollar for my home. In fact, even if your house doesn’t need a lot of maintenance (or in our case finishing) a good power washing and scrubbing down will make your home show better. The better it shows, the faster you will get an offer and the stronger that offer will be. Don’t skimp on the spit shining.

Curb appeal is important which is why we are keeping up with the mowing and the gardens. We want everything to look its best when the property goes on the market.  Even when designing our home, curb appeal was at the top of our minds. When planning a driveway and the approach to a house, too many people get from point A to point B with very little thought and an opportunity is lost for some wonderful curb appeal. What Don envisioned that October day in 1999 as we sat on the hill was a driveway that snaked into the property. As you come in from the road, there are woods on one side that hide the home from view. You start to come around a curve and you catch a peak of the home but then your view is hidden once again by the rolling fields. As you round another curve, there it is in full view; our imagination comes to life. The fruit of our designing efforts to combine a southern plantation home with stylish arts and crafts. This home has curb appeal and plenty of it.

Growing up, Don’s family spent a lot of time in Louisiana and he fell in love with the look of the plantation homes with steep roofs and covered porches. I prefer the arts and crafts movement with pillars and gables. After owning our property for more than two years, we were still debating the design of our new home.  It was a constant topic for discussion. One day I was standing in line at the grocery store and was thumbing through a Southern Living Magazine when I came across the centerfold photo of a Long Island Sound beach house. It had a 12/12 pitch roof, gables, steep dormers and a circular covered porch for dining. This was the BACK of that house, but even so, I was smitten. I bought the magazine and rushed home to show Don. He smiled and said, “yes, that’s it!” We didn’t use that design exactly, but we did use that photograph as the launching point for our imagination as we drew the plans for the home that we eventually built.  Now as we drive home after a night in Asheville, we often remark that our home is just as we imagined it that day as we sat in the pasture.  Its nestled back on the furthest knoll, overlooking the pasture yet surrounded by the 100-acre woods, with the driveway adding to the curb appeal instead of detracting from it. Every ounce of our property was designed as an artistic landscape.  The vision isn’t fully complete but we feel it’s time for the next person to put their impression on this property.

One last note on that Southern Living Magazine photo that our house is based on; to make it perfect, I printed out scaled photos of our two golden retrievers and placed them in the grass in front of the porch. I must have gotten the scale correct as friends joked that we picked that house because it had dogs in the photo.  All of our dogs have enjoyed that porch, watching the sunset and hoping for a deer or fox to bark at. This home was lovingly designed for all of us. The design process is a story for another time.

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When the real estate broker becomes the real estate seller….

When the real estate broker becomes the real estate seller….

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This morning I asked Don, for the dozenth time “did you read my blog post?”

“You posted something?”

I let out a big sigh. “Yes. On debris flows and other types of landslides. It’s posted on both my personal and business Facebook pages. You didn’t see it?”

He replied, “oh, sorry, I thought that was another news report and skimmed past it.”

Houston, we have a problem. I enjoy writing but it seems few people take the time to read what I have written. Don thinks it’s the topics. Every real estate agent that writes a blog writes about staging your home for sale, preparing for home inspections, and other well covered topics. He suggested a change of direction. Don and have decided to sell our home. This means me, a real estate broker, is about to become a home seller. Then a home buyer. Or more likely we will buy land then design and build our next home. Most likely we will be renting for a while. Or maybe living in an RV? Or maybe we will load the dogs in the van and camp out down by the river while we figure out the next step. Hmmm…….I like that idea. This could get interesting.

Let’s start this new direction with the story about how we came to buy this land. Don and I were living in the Riceville area, east of Asheville. He was convinced that he needed more than a few acres to keep him occupied once he retired. I liked the idea of living in the country. We loved the little town of Weaverville and since this would hopefully be our last move, we decided to settle north. Don suggested a little further north in Madison County since the property taxes are lower. I agreed with the caveat that we tried to find land as close to Buncombe County as we could. I was not yet in real estate so finding land was Don’s project. We looked at several parcels but none of them felt right. Then one day he called Bill Eckstat at New Horizons Realty in Mars Hill who directed him to a 9-1/2 acre tract on Bartlett Road, right on the county line.  Everything started falling into place.

After Don had walked the property with Bill, he gathered me and the dogs up in the van and drove us out to this rolling pasture. It had once been a tobacco field but for many years it pastured horses and the wild raspberries were taking over. There was an old tobacco barn sitting under a cluster of massive oak trees on one of the knolls. We walked to this and sat, looking out over the fields while the dogs went exploring. I said this would work. Don wasn’t so sure and I asked why. He said he just couldn’t picture it.

The thing to know about Don and I is that we are both artists. In the late sixties, he briefly went to college to become an architect. College life wasn’t for him and eventually, he joined his dad’s construction business and started building and remodeling homes. In his free time, he drew portraits. Since retiring two years ago, he has rediscovered his art and has even painted a few commissions for clients. I have always been artistic and loved to draw but didn’t find my outlet until about 10 years ago when I took a stained glass class. I decided immediately that I would only work from my own imagination and never from someone else’s pattern. Since then I have created many commissioned portraits of different dogs in glass.  For the two of us together, it means that we can describe ideas, plans, and house features to each other in a way that paints a picture that the other will understand. Not many couples can do this and it is a big part of why home building and remodeling is so stressful for so many people. For us, it’s our Zen place.

So as we sat on that knoll in the rolling pasture, looking out over the possibilities of a home here, I was a little surprised when Don said that he couldn’t picture it. He couldn’t get an image of what our home could look like on this piece of property. I suggested a little exercise in imagery. I told him to envision being on a long vacation and we were returning home. He is pulling in the driveway and what does he see?  We sat there in silence for a while, listening to the birds and watching the dogs chase each other in the pasture. After a while, he said “I got it. This is the place.”  We had found our next home.

When the Earth Moves…

When the Earth Moves…

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Western North Carolina has seen a record amount of rain in the last two weeks. The most recent 15 day total that I saw for Buncombe County put us at over 21 inches of rain. McDowell County is over 24 inches and poor Polk County is at nearly that amount. With this huge deluge of rain comes flooding and many landslides and our area has seen its fair share. Cooincidently, Jennifer Bauer with Appalachian Landslide Consultants was scheduled to talk at my office this week on this very topic. I’m glad I was able to see her presentation.

According to the NC Environmental Quality website, the word Landslide appears to covers debris flows, earth slides, and rock slides. Debris flows are often referred to as mudslides. These will start uphill when water from a spring or heavy rains mix with soil (usually a sandy/silt mixture) and the ground starts to slide, carrying rocks, trees and anything else that gets in its way. Earth slides differ in that it doesn’t take saturated ground to cause the slide. Cracks could open up in the soil that causes the earth to break away. Rock slides often occur during freeze/thaw cycles, wet weather, or any event that causes the earth under large rock formations to become unstable. We most often see these along roadways where the mountain has been carved out to create the road. For better descriptions, visit the NC DEQ page on Recognising Landslides and Appalachian Landslide Consultants page titled “What are Landslides“.

Many of you may remember in 2004 when Hurricane Ivan blew through, causing even greater flooding and property damage then we are seeing today. There was a community in Macon County called Peeks Creek that was wiped out, causing around $1.3 million dollars in property damage. A debris flow started several miles up the mountain and traveled about 32 miles an hour down the mountain, wiping out everything in its path. The scar can still be seen today. Within this community was a family who lived in Florida and had evacuated to their vacation home in Peeks Creek, only to lose their lives to the debris flow. Last week in Polk County, two separate debris flows converged right at the location of a home, killing the woman who lived inside. Monetary damage is nothing compared to the lives that are lost.

When we are house hunting in the mountains, we need to be aware of the ground below us and around us. There are some telltale signs to look for that your property might be susceptible.

  • Cracks in the ground may be signs of unstable ground, especially along driveways and home foundations where the land slopes away
  • Structural damage to a home such as cracks in the foundation. Not all cracks are the same and not all cracks are a sign of a failing foundation, but movement in a foundation wall is a serious red flag
  • Look at the piers that a porch is sitting on. Foundations might be on solid ground but a porch might have been installed over fill dirt. Are the footers sliding out from under the piers?
  • Look at the surroundings. Does the land slope uphill from the house? Are there any visible springs or wet patches in the earth? This could cause ground saturation and then a debris flow
  • Look for curved or bending trees in the woods. Trees want to grow straight to capture the sun. If the ground starts to slide under the tree, it might change the angle that the tree is coming out of the earth, causing it to have to bend it’s way back straight to the sky.

This isn’t an all-inclusive list. If you are considering the purchase of a home on a mountain, or you plan to build, it might be worth the time and expense to hire a company like Appalachian Landslide Consultants to come out and do a site evaluation for you. Your due diligence period allows you the opportunity to do this research so take advantage of it! Just remember, homeowners insurance does not cover damage from landslides and there is no government landslide insurance similar to flood insurance. A sobering thought, isn’t it?

Please stay safe, dry and on high (stable) ground until this crazy weather pattern blows over!

 

It must be Sparkly!

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You have chosen your agent and they are doing their part to make your home look stunning in advertising. Mr & Ms. Seller, you also have work to do!

Your home must SPARKLE. That is capital letters, make no bones about it, SPARKLE. If two identical homes go up for sale on the same street, I promise you that the home that SPARKLES will sell quicker and for more money than the one that is only every-day clean. When a buyer walks in your door, they will see the dirt that is a part of our everyday life and it will make an impression on them. Sometimes, it can be a negative impression. Perfectly fine hardwood floors with smudge marks, dust and paw prints become floors that need to be refinished. Otherwise beautiful kitchen cabinets will suddenly need replacing because of grime that has accumulated around the pulls and handles. Every ounce of dust transmits to the potential buyer how your home was cared for and in turn, this affects not only whether a buyer decides to make an offer but how that offer is framed in terms of purchase price and repair requests. (I have previously addressed odor so I’m not going there again, but needless to say, your home needs to smell good too!)

I once worked with a buyer that looked for every little defect in a home so they could use this as a reason for the seller to reduce their purchase price. If you live in WNC, you know we have ladybugs every spring and stink bugs every fall. This buyer used the presence of even one bug to justify reducing the price. The kitchen pantry needed a good scrub down (what pantry doesn’t?). To her, this was evidence that the sellers were unclean and that she had work to do to make the home livable – so reduce the price. It was not a fun experience for anyone involved.

It is in every seller’s best interest to give their home a deep cleaning to prepare it for sale. Get rid of the cobwebs. Wash down window sills, screens and get rid of puppy nose marks on the windows. Make sure potential buyers can actually see the outdoors! Scrub down cabinets and appliances. Even the inside of a dishwasher could get looked at so make is SPARKLE. Mop your floors and clean the shower. Dust, dust, dust.  And then………keep it up because we all know it comes back again. I promise you that your efforts will pay off!

you own three dogs and see how easy it is to
keep up with puppy nose!
#thestruggleisreal

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Can you see the view????

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Take your dog to work..…every day

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Around the Asheville area, it’s very common to walk into a place of business and be greeted by the office dog.  For many of us, we immediately get a good vibe about the company. Of course, they must be good people if they love dogs!

Being a Real Estate Broker I have been blessed with the ability to bring my dogs to work with me. Sometimes they even get to help out.  A few years ago I marketed and sold a Boarding Kennel / Training facility where two of my dogs helped with the photo shoot to advertise the property. On another occasion, I was asked to bring my Tag along when listing a home. The owner was in her 80’s and the thought of selling her family home was very stressful. Tag sat at her side and gave her comfort through the process. A friend of mine is a home health nurse and often takes his dogs along when visiting home-bound patients. He says this always brightens their day.  A photographer that I know in Florida has used his dog in many photo shoots for jewelry and other items.

When I decided to change real estate offices, I interviewed with several companies. Everyone is positive that I picked Town and Mountain Realty because they have truly gone to the dogs. On an average day, you will see a half dozen different dogs trotting around. As cute a Frankie Doodle is, he really isn’t the reason that I picked this office but he told me a lot about the office. He told me the office has a heart. This is a place that cares about every person that enters the door. Just the other day I was greeted by the secretary Kassie as I pulled in the parking lot. She was walking two visiting dogs while their owners were discussing an offer on a potential new home. How many employers would tell their secretary “Yes! Go play with the customer’s dog so they can concentrate”. Not many people get the significance of that one little act of kindness.  It says a lot about the office I work at and the people I work with. It makes your work environment feel much more inviting. And it doesn’t hurt to always have a fuzzy face to cuddle with when you are having a bad day!

Tripp at my desk